TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
March 30, 2026
Peculiar Elliptical Galaxy Centaurus A
What's happened to the center of this galaxy? Dramatic dust lanes run across the center of unusual elliptical galaxy Centaurus A. These dust lanes are so thick they almost completely obscure the galaxy's center in visible light. This is particularly unusual as Cen A's older stars and oval shape are characteristic of a giant elliptical galaxy, a galaxy type typically low in dark dust. Pictured in this deep image is a complex network of foreground gas and dust, as well as shells of dim stars and a jet projecting to the upper right. Also known as NGC 5128, Cen A is surely the result of a galactic collision where many young dust-creating stars were formed. However, details of the creation of Cen A's unusually active center and iconic central dust lanes are still being researched. Cen A lies only 13 million light years away, making it the closest active galaxy.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqoB1BuCnxk
X Class Solar Flare, Eruption Coming At Earth | S0 News and frens
Mar.30.2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aYC2wP-t6w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRXr-XCdnaY (TheEarthMaster: Japan Earthquakes ramping up. Cascadia Tremor above 200. Sunday Night update)
https://cbs12.com/news/local/not-rain-not-smoke-weird-roost-ring-caught-on-florida-radar-weather-phenomena-national-weather-service-melbourne-crop-circle-conspiracy-theory-birds
https://x.com/SolarHam/status/2038557697226780820
https://x.com/StefanBurnsGeo/status/2038620495956881541
https://x.com/schumannbot/status/2038617271594012789
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/aurora-viewline-tonight-and-tomorrow-night-experimental
https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/earthquakes-volcanoes/past24hours.html
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/r3-event-late-29-mar
https://spaceweather.com/
https://www.beachconnection.net/news/yet-another-great-fireball-above-oregon-washington-and-why.php
other meteors and fireballs
https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/meteorite-fragments-katy-rock-shop-identification-event/285-c566166b-90ab-44f2-b7a8-7e06037f295f
https://researchmatters.in/news/indias-dhala-impact-crater-reveals-how-meteorite-shocks-could-wipe-magnetic-signatures
https://mikemcguff.blogspot.com/2026/03/texas-meteorologist-captures-meteor.html
https://www.amsmeteors.org/2026/03/meteor-activity-outlook-for-march-28-april-3-2026/
https://www.amsmeteors.org/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXKWTB3eZeo (SpaceWeatherNews (S0): THESE ARE NOT METEORS)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdVj528ocbw (Ray's Astro: SUN + FIREBALLS LIVE - Something is Changing - What They Don’t Explain)
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/is-the-recent-surge-in-meteor-fireballs-on-earth-related-to-3i-atlas-a9e8f48d1a00
Yet Another Great Fireball Above Oregon / Washington - And Why So Many Lately
03/30/26 at 12:45 a.m.
From the majority of the western halves of Washington and Oregon, through to British Columbia, reports flowed in of yet another major fireball in the skies.
They came into the American Meteor Society (AMS), which collects and collates meteor and fireball sightings throughout the globe.
So far, at least 86 have been documented from the three areas, ranging from as far south as Eugene, over to the north Oregon coast and up into Washington and southern Canada. (Above: photo from Seattle courtesy AMS)
It was described as bright orange, going SE to NW at 8:36 p.m. Pacific Time. Oregon Nature Tours
Some video and one photo so far have come in from Seattle. This all comes just a week after two other major incidents in the region.
Two Fireballs Hit West Coast Skies in Oregon, Washington, California - Captured on Video - One at 8:19 pm, second at 6:06 am
The AMS also recently revealed why we've seen more than usual lately.
These are meteors, essentially, but get classified as fireballs if they burn out in a long trail lasting more than a second or two – more than the brief streaks you see with meteors.
Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff saw two only two years apart – and almost exactly to the day and hour. That is considered an extremely lucky circumstance.
From 2023, See Spectacular Green Fireball Lights Up Oregon Valley Through Washington Coast From bright white to a neon green: astronomers weigh in
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Jim Todd, astronomy expert with Portland's OMSI, said some were reporting a blue tinge to this fireball. “Red or orange can sometimes come from the ionization of atmospheric nitrogen and oxygen at high altitudes,” Todd said.
“While iron is typically associated with yellow, it can also produce orange-yellow tones. The presence of silicates can also produce an orange color.”
A blue fireball would be more of a magnesium content – maybe copper, Todd told Oregon Coast Beach Connection.
Among the reports from Oregon were: Beaverton, Tualatin, Boring, Gervais, Dayton, Salem, Stayton, Eugene, Willamina, Tygh Valley, Lebanon, Albany, Corvallis and Warrenton on the Oregon coast.
On March 28, there were 86 fireball reports from Oregon and Washington.
On March 26, one event generated 115 reports from Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina and nearby states, while another produced 35 reports from Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and surrounding areas.
On March 23, one fireball drew 151 reports across Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio; another produced 58 reports in Europe; and a separate Midwest event generated 146 reports the same day in Oregon and Washington as well as east of here.
So why are there so many recently?
Mike Hankey is operations manager at the AMS, and he looked into the stats on what is going on with all these fireballs lately. Everyone is asking: is fireball activity actually up?
“The short answer: yes, it’s up — and the data tells us something interesting about why,” he said online.
Large fireball events are defined as those with 50 or more witnesses, and these – he said - have roughly doubled in the first quarter of 2026 compared with the five-year average.
Yet the overall number of fireballs is about typical. In other words, we’re not being hit by more objects - we’re seeing more that are big enough to stand out.
Much of this comes down to the angle that they're approaching and hitting us. Our Earth is angled just right so that these objects make a shallower entry. That's where the fireworks begin.
“Our radiant analysis shows the increase is concentrated around the Anthelion source — the region of sky directly opposite the Sun,” he said on the AMS site. “These are asteroidal objects on orbits similar to Earth’s, moving in the same direction we are.
When they encounter Earth, our orbital velocity is effectively subtracted from theirs, so they enter the atmosphere at relatively low speeds.
Slower entry means the meteor lasts longer in the sky, is visible over a wider area, produces sonic booms more often, and more material survives to reach the ground as meteorites.
That’s exactly what we’ve been seeing - including two rare HED achondrite falls (Germany and Ohio) in just nine days.”
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Weather for NASA’s Artemis II Mission Launch 80% Favorable
March 30, 2026 10:56AM
Ahead of call to stations at 4:34 p.m. EDT on Monday, and the countdown clock beginning at 4:44 p.m., engineers continue preparations toward the launch of the Artemis II mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The agency is targeting no earlier than Wednesday, April 1, for launch. The weather forecast shows an 80% chance of favorable weather conditions, with cloud coverage and potential for high winds on the ground as primary weather concerns.
Teams will continue to monitor the weather in the coming days.
At 5 p.m., NASA is hosting a news conference to provide a status update on the mission. Participants include:
Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya
John Honeycutt, chair, Mission Management Team
Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, launch director
Emily Nelson, chief flight director
Get the full listing of upcoming briefings and stay tuned here on the Artemis blog for updates.
https://www.nasa.gov/live/
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/03/30/weather-for-nasas-artemis-ii-mission-launch-80-favorable/
https://www.youtube.com/@NASA/streams
extra Artemis II
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/sun-rises-on-artemis-2-launch-pad-space-photo-of-the-day-for-march-30-2026
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/the-sasquatch-is-honesty-inside-canadian-astronaut-jeremy-hansens-artemis-2-mission-patch
https://www.space.com/news/live/artemis-2-nasa-moon-mission-launch-updates-march-30-2026
https://www.restaurantnews.com/krispy-kreme-artemis-ii-doughnut-nasa-mission-033026/
https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2038316342785290634
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BeTS50wj7o (Angry Astronaut: What happens if something goes VERY WRONG with Artemis 2??)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGiZk8k0b88 (Stefan Burns: Is NASA's Moon Mission an April Fool's Joke?)
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2026-03-30/socal-native-set-to-be-first-black-person-to-reach-moon
little extra Artemis II
https://www.space.com/astronomy/sun/powerful-x-class-solar-flare-triggers-radio-blackout-ahead-of-artemis-2-launch
https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/we-are-getting-very-very-close-nasa-makes-final-artemis-ii-preparations-as-expectation-grows-for-wednesday-launch
https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/farthest-fastest-and-most-diverse-6-major-records-the-artemis-ii-astronauts-will-smash-as-nasa-returns-to-the-moon
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/how-will-artemis-2-be-different-from-nasas-apollo-moon-missions
https://science.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/anu-lends-its-expertise-laser-communications-support-nasas-artemis-ii-crewed-moon
A SoCal native is set to pilot NASA’s lunar mission — and become the first Black person to reach the moon
March 30, 2026 3 AM PT
NASA’s Artemis II, slated to launch Wednesday, is the agency’s first crewed mission to go around the moon since 1972.
It will be piloted by Southern California native Victor Glover, who was the first Black astronaut to serve as long-term crew on the International Space Station.
He could soon become the first Black person to travel to the moon.
NASA’s Artemis II mission, the first to send humans around the moon in half a century, is slated to launch Wednesday. It will be piloted by one of Southern California’s own.
Victor Glover — a former Ontario High School wrestler and Navy test pilot who often wears his excitement on his royal-blue jumpsuit sleeve — will be the first Black person to reach the moon.
The mission is a lunar flyby, so the crew will not land on the moon or enter lunar orbit. Glover, 49, became the first Black person to serve on an International Space Station expedition in 2020.
“That cannot be right,” Livingston Holder, a former manned spaceflight engineer with the Air Force and space shuttle payload specialist, recalled thinking when he first heard that fact.
“How can we go two decades without flying a Black astronaut on a full mission to the station? How can that possibly be?”
Yet, it’s true: Several trailblazing Black astronauts stayed aboard for several days while helping build the ISS on space shuttle missions. None had lived aboard for months on end as an expedition crew member afterward.
For Glover, the achievement — and title of “first” — stirred complicated feelings. In the flurries of media interviews that come with life as an astronaut, he acknowledged the deep responsibility he felt toward the next generations of Black astronauts he hoped to inspire.
At the same time, he often reframed his role into NASA’s greater mission and pointed to the many Black trailblazers, such as Holder, before him.
“He’d probably been the first Black person to do X, Y or Z,” said Holder, whose planned mission to space was ultimately canceled after the Challenger disaster in 1986.
And since Glover, a team player, was not the first person to serve on an ISS expedition or reach the moon, but instead the first Black person to do so, “I don’t think he really wanted to emphasize ‘I’m the first,’” Holder added.
Glover wasn’t really supposed to be the first Black person to serve on an ISS expedition, either. In 2018, Jeanette Epps was scheduled to join a Russian Soyuz mission to the ISS, which would have given her the title, but five months before the mission, NASA suddenly benched her without explanation.
And while he was aboard the ISS, many Black Americans — including Glover — were forced to grapple with more Earthly challenges. Just months before launch, a white police officer murdered George Floyd in the streets of Minneapolis.
It’s a familiar tension in Black America: The Apollo program began during the peak of the civil rights movement. Many criticized the program as a distraction from the country’s problems and a waste of money that the government could instead use to better the lives of everyday Americans.
During the training for his moon mission, Glover listened to the poem “Whitey on the Moon” by the late Black poet and jazz musician Gil Scott-Heron — which articulates those arguments painfully and pointedly — every week on his morning commute to ground himself in his work.
For Glover, space exploration is an opportunity to lift all Americans and invest in technology that creates hope for a better future.
“Every time you are the first — the first person in your family to go to college, the first person from your school to get a PhD … it’s important for all the people that start where you started,” Holder said. Now they can say, “‘Oh, it is possible.’”
For Black parents in Pomona and beyond who see the next generation of NASA astronauts in their cute, nerdy children, Glover’s example is deeply meaningful.
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Glover, born in 1976 in Pomona, was an adrenaline junkie who dreamed of being everything from a stuntman to a race car driver.
His parents, a police officer and a bookkeeper, encouraged his curiosity. The young astronaut-to-be also looked up to his grandfather, who enlisted in the Air Force during the Korean War, but was told he couldn’t fly because of his race.
When a young Glover watched a space shuttle launch on television, he immediately wanted to drive the thing.
His first attempt to leave Earth was through sports — pole vaulting, to be specific.
Throughout his time at Ontario High and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Glover also added football into the mix and ultimately became best known for his wrestling prowess (despite feeling quite intimidated by his college teammate at the time, Chuck Liddell, who ultimately became an MMA star).
Gregg Givens, an English teacher at Ontario who coached football at the time, remembered Glover as a very nice, very smart kid. “He was marching to his own drummer,” Givens said. “I know that’s a cliche way to say things, but … he was going to do what Victor was going to do.”
After getting a bachelor’s degree in engineering, Glover enlisted in the Navy in 1998. Over his 15 years in the military, he accumulated 3,500 flying hours in more than 40 aircraft, a few master’s degrees along the way, and served in 24 combat missions.
One of his commanding officers bestowed on him a call sign that’s stuck through his NASA days: “Ike,” meaning “I know everything.” (It’s a sensibility his four daughters surely appreciated when Glover, a family man at his core, checks in from space to help them with their homework.)
Like many others before him — including Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon — Glover cut his teeth as a test pilot out in the Mojave.
He attended test pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base, the site of many daring Armstrong flights and space shuttle landings, then served with the Navy’s Dust Devil test pilot squadron in China Lake, Calif.
In 2013, while Glover was in Washington, D.C., on assignment as a Navy legislative fellow, he happened to miss a phone call from NASA. After frantically calling back, he got the news:
He was one of eight selected out of a pool of more than 6,000 for the space agency’s 21st class of astronauts.
On Artemis II, he won’t be the only “first” on the capsule: NASA astronaut Christina Koch is set to be the first woman to reach the moon, and Jeremy Hansen, an astronaut with the Canadian Space Agency, is set to be the first non-American to do so.
Holder, whom Glover has pointed to as a mentor, is happy to live vicariously through Glover’s generation of Black astronauts.
On a recent trip to Australia, Holder, now a co-founder of the spaceflight startup Radian Aerospace, stopped by one of the many stations that will help the astronauts communicate with Earth to send Glover a message ahead of launch:
“Through you, we all go to the moon.”
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Scientists awaken mice from cryogenic sleep, inspired by Alien and Interstellar, setting sights on humans
28 March 2026
Cold storage is no longer just a sci-fi prop. At the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, neurologist Alexander German’s team restored neural activity in mouse hippocampal tissue after a plunge to -196°C.
Their edge was vitrification, a rapid chill with cryoprotectants that dodges the ice crystals that usually shred neurons.
Beyond nods to Alien, Fallout, or Interstellar, the work hints at sturdier organ banks and new ways to safeguard the brain, even as the leap from tissue slices to whole organs remains daunting.
From science fiction to scientific reality
For decades, cryo-sleep was a narrative device, a hush between scenes in Alien or Interstellar. Now, the hush is breaking.
On 03/20/2026, researchers at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg reported restoring brain activity in cryogenically preserved mouse tissues, a result discussed in Nature (2026).
The mood in the lab, they say, was electric. Could humanity be next?
A breakthrough in cryogenic preservation
Lead neurologist Alexander German and his team confronted the nemesis of freezing: ice crystals that shred cells on formation.
Their answer was vitrification, a technique that uses cryoprotective solutions to shift water into a glass-like (non-crystalline) state.
Cooled to a stark -196°C, tissues kept their micro-architecture intact. On rewarming, neurons showed signs of synaptic recovery, suggesting function can follow form when the form is meticulously preserved.
Testing cryosleep on mouse brain tissues
The group focused on hippocampal slices, the brain’s memory hub. After vitrifying, storing for 7 days, and carefully rewarming, electrodes picked up responsive firing and plasticity—signals of brain revival rather than mere survival.
This matters. It implies the network’s wiring and its adaptable strength endured the deep freeze, edging cryonics from preserving cells to preserving connections that underwrite cognition (according to this study).
Applications beyond imagination
The immediate canvas isn’t starships; it’s hospitals. Cryogenic control could reshape care, from emergency logistics to planned transplants.
Researcher Mrityunjay Kothari praised the milestone, noting how stories—from Fallout’s vaults to Hollywood pods—often seed real laboratories (University of New Hampshire).
If results scale, the playbook for medicine might expand rapidly.
Long-term organ banking to cut wait times and waste
Neuroprotection during complex surgeries with extended “safe” pauses
Stepwise progress toward torpor for deep-space missions
Obstacles on the journey to human cryosleep
Scaling is the cliff. What works on thin slices must traverse to whole organs, then entire bodies. Cryoprotectants can be toxic; rewarming must be uniform to avoid cracks or protein damage.
Engineers are exploring precise heat delivery and smarter perfusion to thread that needle. Ethical, regulatory, and logistical hurdles loom, yet the trajectory is now firmly scientific exploration rather than speculation.
https://3dvf.com/en/scientists-awaken-mice-from-cryogenic-sleep-inspired-by-alien-and-interstellar-setting-sights-on-hum/
Science Reorganization Planning At NASA Ames
March 29, 2026
there’s some plans in under serious consideration at NASA Ames to do some “phone book updates” aka organizational changes.
Most notable is the flattening of the ARC Science Directorate (Code S) into 4 divisions: Space Biosciences, Earth Science, Astrophysics, and Planetary Science / Astrobiology. Flattening = eliminating existing branches.
Meanwhile ARC also wants to create an Astrobiology Office at the center’s directorate level. Not sure how this new directorate interacts with SMD Astrobiology management or efforts at other NASA centers.
No one at PAO is going to comment on this because of that “predecisional” safety word thing. Stay tuned.
https://nasawatch.com/space-science-news/science-reorganization-planning-at-nasa-ames/
https://www.nasa.gov/ames/ames-leadership-organizations/
Sierra Space Appoints Jeff Schrader as Chief Strategy Officer
Mar 30, 2026 10:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time
Sierra Space Corp. (“Sierra Space”), a proven defense-tech space company delivering solutions for the nation’s most critical space missions and advancing the future of security in space, today announced that Jeff Schrader has joined the company as chief strategy officer.
In this role, Schrader will serve on the executive leadership team and help guide Sierra Space through its next phase of strategic growth.
He will lead initiatives supporting the company’s scale and expansion priorities, including corporate development, mergers and acquisitions strategy, and planning for franchise wins.
“Jeff brings a strong combination of strategic leadership, national security expertise, operational discipline and deep understanding of our mission and customer community,” said Dan Jablonsky, CEO of Sierra Space.
“As we accelerate the business and scale for the future, Jeff will help us create long-term value, strengthen alignment across the enterprise and position Sierra Space to move faster and with greater impact.”
Schrader brings more than 25 years of experience across government service, strategy, business development, operations and profit-and-loss leadership in the aerospace and defense sector.
Most recently, he served as vice president of strategy and business development at Lockheed Martin Space, where he led a multinational team supporting a business area of more than $13 billion.
Previously, he served as president of SEAKR Engineering and Blue Canyon Technologies, where he led execution and growth for a combined workforce of more than 1,000 employees.
He has also has held leadership roles at RTX and General Dynamics. Schrader began his career as a U.S. Air Force civil servant, starting as a financial analyst and advancing to chief financial officer for special programs and later, AFRCO the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260330930985/en/Sierra-Space-Appoints-Jeff-Schrader-as-Chief-Strategy-Officer
SpaceX Starlink Mission
March 30, 2026 14:15 - 18:15 PT
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is targeting the launch of 29 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
A live webcast of this mission will begin about five minutes prior to liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. You can also watch the webcast on the X TV app.
This will be the 34th flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched CRS-22, Crew-3, Turksat 5B, Crew-4, CRS-25, Eutelsat HOTBIRD 13G, SES O3B mPOWER-A, PSN SATRIA, Telkomsat Merah Putih 2, Galileo L13, Koreasat-6A, and 22 Starlink missions.
Following stage separation, the first stage will land on the Just Read the Instructions droneship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
https://www.spacex.com/launches/sl-10-44
https://payloadspace.com/transporter-16-sends-119-payloads-to-orbit/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfOYvHk_USY
Firefighters battle wildfire burning on Aurora Space Force base Sunday
Mar. 29, 2026 at 10:50 AM PDT
AURORA, Colo. (KKTV) - Firefighters worked fast Sunday to get the upper hand on a new fire that ignited on a Colorado military facility.
The fire started on Buckley Space Force Base around 9:40 Sunday morning.
The Aurora Fire Department said it was burning east of Mississippi and Ceylon Street, on the western edge of the base, and putting up a significant amount of smoke that could be seen across the city.
The department updated nearly an hour later that its team was “making good progress controlling the fire,” and that fire department resources were protecting the open space on the city side of the perimeter fence.
Just before 11 a.m., the fire department said the blaze was no longer posing a threat to the city.
The cause of the fire has not been released, and no size estimate has been provided.
https://www.kktv.com/2026/03/30/firefighters-battle-wildfire-burning-aurora-space-force-base-sunday/
https://twitter.com/AuroraFireDpt/status/2038280465023746486
https://twitter.com/AuroraFireDpt/status/2038291771818680463
At least one killed in Ukrainian attack on Russian city – governor
Updated 30 Mar, 2026 05:09
At least one man was killed and another wounded in the southern Russian city of Taganrog on Sunday amid a large-scale Ukrainian drone attack, Rostov Region Governor Yury Slyusar has said.
The attack inflicted material damage on the ground, sparking multiple fires, the governor said in a statement posted on his Telegram channel. The attack on the region continues, he warned, urging citizens to stay put in shelters.
“I extend the deepest condolences to family and friends of the deceased. We’ll provide all the necessary support to the victims,” Slyusar wrote.
All the relevant emergency services have been working on the ground, while civilians have been evacuated from the sites affected by the drones and their debris, the governor added.
The attack reportedly has been going on for over three hours. Ukraine has been regularly launching drones deep into Russian territory, targeting assorted civilian infrastructure, industrial sites, and residential buildings.
The attacks have seemingly intensified since mid-March, with Ukraine sending in hundreds of fixed-wing UAVs on a daily basis.
Russian officials have repeatedly described the strikes as indiscriminate “terrorist” attacks designed to compensate for the setbacks the Ukrainian military has been suffering on the battlefield.
Moscow has retaliated with a long-range strike campaign of its owna against dual-use critical infrastructure and military installations. Russia insists it never targets purely civilian sites.
https://www.rt.com/russia/636679-at-least-one-killed-in-russian-taganrog/
extra RT
https://www.rt.com/russia/636669-us-made-interesting-offers-to-russia-kremlin-aide-ushakov/
Chekt, nice.
It crosses my mind every now and then.
Never did figure out the 1909 business.
I've heard a few things that may fit it… but I can't exactly remember what they were at the moment kek
they have files on every one of you
you'd never believe where they keep them
always gave me 'producer on the moon' vibes